Fragile
by xLilly White
Summary: She's pressing an ear to his imaginary heart. Pretending that his hands are on her skin. Making believe that she's alive. Because a concubine's life is just a spiral of nothing and gold, gold, gold. [ImhotepAnckPharaoh]


x x x

**fragile**

x x x

In some ways… her life could be nice.

She has servants that are kind to her. She has seashells necklaces, silver ankle bracelets, hair-beads of the purest Egyptian gold. She has little pots of lotus fragrance, cones of the most valuable incense. She has a more or less comfortable apartment that boasts a more or less comfortable bed, though she knows she can never sleep, even in the most blissful hours of silence.

She has the attention of the Pharaoh. She supposes that a part of her somehow owns that wanton gaze that she sometimes sees in his inky eyes, when she strips away all the layers of glittering godliness that are tightly clamped around him, like a cocoon, hiding the real man and all of his mortal desires.

Yes, she has all that.

Yet she smiles splintered smiles. She dances choreographies of desperation. She fights with the vigor of a lioness, graceful and tragic and draped in gold, gold, glittering petals of Egyptian gold.

Aspects. Exterior beauty.

Judgment. Object.

She's just a beautiful toy. She's just a doll with an immaculate mask, lips made of honey, fake eyelashes sticking together with tears.

_She's just a beautiful whore._

She dresses up her body with golden paint and necklaces, dresses up her face with jovial eyes and smiling lips. But her heart, at least, is not made of the infamous sunlight-coloured metal. She has no doubts that her days and nights spent in this tainted luxury will someday transform her entire body into a golden statue, motionless, speechless, hard as stone and so, so cold. Someday. But nothing can touch her heart.

Nothing at all. Her heart is one of the two things that she values more than the entire world.

You see, she has a secret, locked away in the quivering chambers of her rebellious heart. Something buried deep within its most intimate caverns, something that is incrusted in its very core, forever gaining territory, spreading black tentacles like some kind of stubborn tumor.

It won't leave her alone. She has a feeling that it never will- not that she's complaining. And there is no medicine for her illness. Not that she cares, of course. She would rather drown in the bittersweet poison of her secret than live on with it dismembered from her being. Taking out the tumor would be like tugging a cork out of her heart, chain reaction causing the bubbling crimson torrent of her essence to burst out of the little organ in a screaming feral rage.

It's become a part of her, you see.

And it won't go away.

_It won't go away._

x

They are completely entwined, skin against skin, heart against heart. She can feel his blunt nails digging into the sweaty flesh of her legs, the smoothness of her back, sliding across the bumps of her spine. His mouth is just by her ear, and he's breathing so softly; she can hear his whispers, she can hear his heartbeat, she can feel the butterfly flutter of his eyelashes against her cheek. Reveling in the sensation of hot breath washing over her sensitive skin, relishing his saccharine delicacy as he touches her like he would the most precious of crystals.

She arches into him as he trails his open lips across her jaw line, a hand pressing against the small of her back and the other sliding along her thigh, moving it slightly so that she has her leg hooked around his waist. And then he's caught her lips in a burning kiss, and oh how pleasant it is to melt into him, to abandon herself to his delectable treatment as she obediently parts her lips to the soft insistence of his tongue. When they part to draw breath- do they even have the certainty that they are still alive?- both their eyes are still closed, and their mouths are at a mere hair's width distance, trembling, gasping. His eyes slide open, slowly, eyelids heavy with passion, and he looks at her beautiful face for a moment that could've lasted weeks, years, or maybe in reality it's just been a few scattered seconds that have passed. Perceptions are so distorted while they are together like this that neither of them care about anything else but this moment, _their_ moment.  
The corner of his lips curls in a tender smile as he observes the nude woman in his arms. He lets his gaze travel over the smooth contours of her face, the honey coloured flesh of her arms, the perfect orbs of her breasts. Her lips parting in a satisfied moan as he lets his fingers run over her skin, her soft breath tickling his face.

She is so heart-wrenchingly beautiful. And she is completely his.

_Completely his_.

Then there's sunlight on her face and her eyes are wide open, her cheeks dripping with tears as she wakes up. It's always the same damn thing. And she can't help it that she dreams of him so much, only, she wishes she wouldn't. Because then there's a burning ache that's racking her entire body when she wakes up, and she finds herself locking the door and sliding down the wall in a slippery sweaty mess, a hand between her thighs, a wretched soliloquy ripped from her trembling lips. She's so pathetic.

_So damnably pathetic_.

It's because the desire to feel him near her is poisoning her mind, poisoning her sense of dignity, till she thinks of nothing else night and day. She knows it now- her heart can't beat, if not in unison with his. Her lips can't draw breath, if not locked against his. She simply can't _function_ without him.

But no one can see that, can they?

No one cares about the sentiments of one poor concubine. No one cares that she has bumpy scars marring the smooth skin of her wrists. No one cares that her eyes never smile.

And the thing is, they don't know that she's aware of all this. More importantly, the Pharaoh doesn't know that she's aware of this. He thinks she's happy in the opulence of his harem. He thinks she is content with her life. He probably even thinks she loves him.

He thinks she _loves _him.

Seti I. The man's such a joke, to her eyes. Her sole duty as his concubine is to linger in the corridors, waiting for him to call on her so that they can spend the night satisfying their lust. Only, she knows that he's using her. She's not fucking _dupe_, like practically all the other girls. Sometimes he gets all romantic with her, whispering things in her ear and looking deep into her eyes and shit. She doesn't mind, and honestly she's a little flattered by what he says sometimes.

But he doesn't know.

He doesn't know she's using him right back.

He doesn't know that, when her eyes are squeezed shut and her hips are trembling and her fingers are painfully digging into his back, teeth biting her lower lip so hard that rivulets of blood are dripping down her chin as wave upon wave of pleasure crashes through her body, it is not him that she sees behind her eyelids. She's pretending that it's the hands of her High Priest that are gliding over her body, she's pretending that it's his tongue that's sliding across her own, his waist that her legs are possessively curled around, his heart that is erratically pounding against her own. Not the Pharaoh. Never the Pharaoh.

And so, every time the great Seti I accomplishes the gracious act of fucking his concubine senseless, he flings her away. Discards her like the beautiful object that she is to him.

But she doesn't mind. She's satisfied. Sometimes she even smiles a nearly genuine smile at the Pharaoh, before leaving his chambers, naked and trembling in the aftermath.

Like always she retires to her chambers and sits on her bed, motionless and staring at the ceiling. After a moment, she finds that her lips have curled into a sardonic grin. And then she's laughing, laughing like a shameless jackal, hiccupping as her entire body shakes with violent peels of laughter. The Pharaoh had told her that he loved her, once again, the pitiful little wretch. She's clutching at her sides now, laughing so hard that her abdomen is jerking uncontrollably and tears are leaking out of the corners of her eyes.

So laughable.

_The Pharaoh had told her that she was to be his wife. _

So very…

…laughable…

The tears of fake laughter are snaking their way down her cheeks, and her laughter dies down as she hides her face in her hands, her smile transforming into an ugly grimace of despair. She's crying now, though no sound further escapes her honey lips. Warm droplets of anguish drip from her chin, splashing on her knees, before resuming their fiery course down her calves.

_Why is this happening?_

Drip, drip.

_What did I do to the Gods to deserve this?_

The answer was simple enough.

About as simple as slicing open the scars on her wrists in attempt to drown her torment in physical pain, as she had done before.

_Imhotep…_

She's not alive when he's not around. She's a zombie. A pretty, pliable puppet, to be used by everyone at will.

She's nothing, and she knows it. Nothing without him. She's gotten used to that horrid, barren feeling that is missing him, like no other woman has ever known. What other choice does she have, if she wants to survive?...

That's all her life seems to be, caught in the golden clutches of the Palace. A crude game of survival. It's everything she never wanted, and yet…

_It's perfect._

* * *

&. **finis**

* * *

a&n: _Damn _belated birthday present for the awesomest person alive, estora ; ; ; and it was rated 'm' for a reason, my lovelies. -grin-  
Reviews make the world go round. Who'd've thought, hey? 


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